Marketing operations professionals are becoming more involved in the planning and budget management process and are increasingly working closely with the C-suite, according to the 2023 edition of The State of the Marketing Operations Professional report [download page] from MarketingOps in partnership with Uptempo and Clearbit.
Not surprisingly, Sales (72%) and Sales Operations (69%) teams are the ones that marketing ops professionals say their teams are most likely to say they regularly work closely with, followed by Revenue Operations teams (54%). Close behind, though, almost half (49%) report working closely with the C-suite or leadership teams, up from 37% who said the same last year.
There appear to be some differences in ties between Marketing Ops teams and others when sorting by company revenue. Respondents from higher-revenue companies ($500+ million) are less likely than their counterparts at lower-revenue companies ($10 million or less) to work closely with the Support and Client Success teams. By contrast, the higher the company’s revenue, the more likely the Marketing Ops team is to regularly work in close concert with the IT team.
The primary job responsibility that’s most commonly-cited by respondents this year is data analysis/synthesis/reporting (69%), followed closely by designing, implementing, and optimizing operational policies and procedures (67%). Majorities also indicate that evaluation of and need-identification for tech stack (61%) and developing and implementing software or system integrations/systems (57%) are among their top responsibilities, with the latter having held the mantle as the leading responsibility last year.
These main responsibilities also differ by company revenue: those at the highest-revenue companies ($500 million+) are most apt to be tasked with designing, implementing, and optimizing operational policies and procedures (75%) and evaluation of and needs-identification for tech-stack (73%).
Separately, among various options presented and asked which is the most important responsibility of a marketing operations professional, respondents pointed first to revenue cycle definition and process (27.5% share), slightly ahead of reporting and analytics (25.5% share).
Whatever their main responsibilities are, it’s true that these professionals are in demand: recent research found almost two-thirds (64%) of marketers agreeing that the market is lacking marketers with the necessary martech, data or marketing operations skills and knowledge.
Finally, given their work with technology, it’s interesting to see how marketing ops professionals approach evaluating new tech. The most important criterion considered by far is the ability to integrate to existing and new technology (80%), followed distantly by price (49%) and product scalability (47%).
For more, download the full report here.
About the Data: The results are based on an May-August survey of 553 marketing operations professionals, most of whom work at companies with more than 200 employees. The majority of respondents are in the Technology/Software industry.
